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Extravagant festivals in Barcelona and New York coincided this week with Melbourne's fabulous parade of fashion. Janice Breen Burns reports.

A decade ago, when the lights went up on our first
Australian Fashion Week in Sydney, its founder, Simon Lock, proposed a
crazy-sounding pipe dream for local fashion's future: "Something to think
about," he said at the time.

As if AFW weren't cheeky enough, offering,
as it did, Australian designers as viable competitors on the same stage as
Prada, Jean Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent et al, (let alone Gap, Guess
and Gucci), Lock's off-the-wall, fries-with-that fantasy was (get this)
one day, maybe, when the time is right, and all the planets are neatly
aligned, Australian designers might even reverse the international
fashion calendar.

In other words, instead of being six to 18
months behind, the rest of the world's buyers would shop with us first,
leaving the rest of the world to gather their creative thoughts and
fashion collections six to 18 months behind us. (Behind us.)

Stupid
idea.

Or was it? This week in Barcelona, the increasingly
internationally renowned Pasarela Gaudi fashion week offered a picture of
summer 2005 remarkably similar to the one drawn by Aussie designers at
Australian Fashion Week in May for our summer 2004-05. Early reports from
New York's show series, in full swing now, also suggest Aussies accurately
tuned into the Zeitgeist as they began work on their collections late last
year.

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The best designs from Barcelona and New York are pictured
here.

Of course, fashion itself has become a helpful pointer for
designers from one season to the next, conveniently and slowly evolving,
shape by shape, detail by detail, instead of slapping down a new set of
rules twice a year. But Lock's preposterous pipe dream does appear to be
at least partially possible, and as fashion collectors supporting our
local industry, we can trust the tourists who visit us and declare, "But -
you're all so chic down here."